Does the Influencer industry still matter?

Quotes

• “I was a social media manager at a large agency and I was running these Facebook pages and Instagram just started. The brands were spending millions of dollars trying to add fans and likes to their Facebook pages. So I ran the Real Housewives Facebook pages, which was hilarious, and Ugg Boots andCoke Zero’s Twitter account had to be funny and sarcastic, and they were working with a persona.” -Mae“People were just loving the fact that a brand would tweet out random things and actually have an identity. People are raising their hand, oh I love that brand. I want to follow that brand, that looks cool. It was percolating in my head.” -Mae“There was a real opportunity to work with influencers (it wasn’t even a term yet) so bloggers, who have 5,000 to 10,000 followers on Instagram or Twitter, if Icould send them a product and make them feel really special and the brand thinks that they are a VIP we could probably get them to start talking about these brands.” -Mae“The interesting thing to me about your story is also what has happened in the social media community where the focus used to be the brands building their own assets, like I said, an organic social. Then it became blogger outreach and now we actually have influencers and it’s less about trying to grow your own platform and more working with the people that have their reach. Built into that is that brands are no longer as focused on their own likes and build their own following.” -Ben “There is a pretty big gap between the way most brands and brand marketers think about their marketing channels and how to launch a campaign and what the results are. One one hand, you want to do a photoshoot, you hire a photographer, there is a setup, they hire models and they get it done and assets are delivered on a specific timeline under a contract. They are in a business frame of mind.” -Mae“And over here, some of the largest, most successful influencers they just started this thing on a whim because they love knitting or they love make-up. They are in a creative frame of mind.” -Mae“We are really bridging the gap between the two groups, to make sure that the influencer is doing something they love otherwise it’s not going to perform, but also that the influencers are creating a content that the brands can really find value in and that they are really getting their key messages across in a trackable way.” -Mae“We really wanted to align with the brand’s budget because we really need to know what’s working for them in order to grow our business. If they are not successful, I am not going to be able to double in size.” -Mae“Also your incentive is to charge as much as you possibly can if you are taking a percentage.” -Ben “Right and that mightnot be the right thing for the brand. It’s like you work with an influencer and you pay for $25,000 to work with them and you find out that someone else is paying $2,000 and that is an actual example of rates we have negotiated and you don’t feel so great after that interaction when you are on the brand’s side.” -Mae“We either work on a retainer or a project basis with our brand clients and they are paying to access our platform, so they have access to our database of influencers, all the influencers they have ever worked with, all the content that has ever been created on their behalf and we manage every aspect of their work with all of their influencers which is really attractive for brands.” -Mae“I think the influencer industry is just getting started. We now have insurance companies that are our clients, finance companies, apps, mental health companies, things that really stayed away in the beginning and they are seeing the beneifits now too. Especially as we start working with smaller and smaller influencers and honing in on who is working well for each brand and who is really ROI positive at the end of the day.” -Mae